GOP field scrambles in fall cash dash

With the third-quarter fundraising deadline looming Friday, all eyes will be on what the two top GOP presidential contenders have raised. The big question: Can Rick Perry, after entering the race in mid-August, haul in more than Mitt Romney, who already tapped many of his top supporters in the previous quarter?

Among Republican insiders, the assumption is that both will clear $10 million – but few have a feel for by just how much.

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The frontrunners aren’t the only ones whose Federal Election Commission reports will be closely scrutinized for signs of campaign health and vigor. The other Republican hopefuls will also release numbers that could either confirm or dispel assumptions about the race - and offer an idea of who is and isn’t likely to be around when the first votes are cast next year.

Here’s a preliminary look at what’s likely to be in the reports:

RICK PERRY:

The Texas governor’s report will be watched more closely than any other GOP candidate. Entering the race almost exactly halfway in the middle of the quarter, Perry has had less time than his rivals to raise cash but has been able to tap into his extensive Texas donor base. After a lackluster debate and a defeat at the Florida GOP straw poll on Saturday, Perry could use an impressive number to remind Republicans of why he could be formidable.

Carney added: “If every event reaches its goal we’ll be over $10 million.”

Others in Perry’s orbit are more confident that they’ll exceed that clip and one top bundler suggested it could be as high as $15 million.

As of last week, Carney said that Perry still had over a dozen finance events left on his calendar before the end of the month.

One stop that’s raising eyebrows in GOP money circles is a Thursday fundraiser in Houston – a city he already had an event in at the end of August.

“If Perry is going back for a second round of Texas money that tells me he didn’t get as much as he had hoped to the first time,” said one top Republican money man who is uncommitted in the race.

It could also mean there’s more home-state cash to vacuum up. But Republicans in Washington and New York indicate that Perry may need to squeeze as much as he can out of Texas because he’s only finding modest success in the two hubs of campaign money.

That’s partly because the lobbyists and Wall Streeters who populate the Acela corridor’s donor class are notoriously cautious about getting behind anybody who’s not a sure thing.

“When they say they want to wait and see that’s code for, ‘I’m waiting to see if Perry implodes and if he’s going to, I don’t want to be with him,’” said one Beltway Republican who’s raising for the Texan and said the effort was only going “ok” in part because his candidate’s debate performance had prompted uncommitted donors to sit on their wallets a little while longer.